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The clouds of extremism have hovered over Deir Ezzor community since late 2012, when the dark organizations took advantage of the blessed Syrian revolution, and (the confrontation with the Assad regime), to infiltrate the revolution and begin to gnaw at it in implementation of agendas that were later exposed to be made for the killing of the Syrian revolution.
Deir Ezzor is the target of the extremist organizations
Since the date mentioned above, the sky of Deir Ezzor has been covered with a dark black cloud, that transformed the province into a prison, in which people became captive to the thought of these organizations, which people of Deir Ezzor hadn’t known before late 2012, one of them infiltrated the community under the name of (Jabhat al-Nusra). It disguised itself in the cloak of religion, and raised its sword against the people of Deir Ezzor.
Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda branch in Syria), took advantage of the Syrian revolution against Assad regime, and began to attract the people of Syria, including Deir Ezzor, to its ranks. It established its headquarters in the eastern Deir Ezzor countryside, and began to attract the youth of Deir Ezzor to expand its blackness, by manipulating the revolutionary sentiment of these young men to carry out its evil policy, through which it was able to control Deir Ezzor province and its wealth and resources, which it needs to finance its project, that it carried out by the hands of Deir Ezzor’s people themselves, after washing their brains, to use them as fuel in its project, so al-Nusra was able to accomplish more than one goal at once, controlling the resources of Deir Ezzor and using them in its project, controlling the eastern region as a whole, limiting the role of the Free Army in Deir Ezzor and drying up its resources, to has the upper hand, and control the decision in Deir Ezzor.
As their owners, thoughts from different nationalities and states have come with al-Nusra’s foreign elements. Deir Ezzor’s people became victims to these extremist thoughts, through which al-Nusra cracked down on civilians, by controlling the key areas of life in Deir Ezzor, and preventing education in the schools of Deir Ezzor. “Marriage of minors” phenomenon also appeared in that era, where more than once, foreign elements married girls from Deir Ezzor under the age of 15, as their families were coveting the power of these foreign elements. Other strange phenomena also started to appear in the society of Deir Ezzor, such as dress, where women were forced to wear niqab, and men were forced to wear loose and long dress. Al-Nusra also controlled the social customs, in this context, Abu Khalid, a young man from Deir Ezzor city said: “In 2013, when we were living in our city, Deir Ezzor, under the bombardment of Assad regime, some families refused to leave the liberated neighborhoods of Deir Ezzor.
At that time, the real ruler was Jabhat al-Nusra, which ruled according to the sharia of al-Qaeda, so it was like a whip on the necks of civilians. In one of the incidents that I’ll never forget, one of the foreign emirs of Jabhat al-Nusra named “Abu al-Baraa al-Tunisi” entered a house where women were celebrating a wedding in Al-Hamidiyah neighborhood, without permission, he and his elements broke into the house and saw the women without “Hijab”, on the pretext that they were listening to songs, which is forbidden in the Sharia.”
The tyranny of Jabhat al-Nusra overshadowed Deir Ezzor from late 2012 to july, 2014, when it left Deir Ezzor and handed over the mission to an uglier and bloodier organization, the most extremist one on earth, “Daesh”. The
group took control of Deir Ezzor province in July 2014, the date at which the journey of great sufferings started in Deir Ezzor, where from the very beginning of its control over the province, the organisation started to spread terrorism among civilians, where in the first months of its control, it killed hundreds of young rebels of Deir Ezzor through the laws produced in the dark tents of the organization, then it applied this oppressive laws to the people of Deir Ezzor, and dominated all the key areas of life. It destroyed the values, and came with new ones, destroyed the family and community ties, controlled every detail of people’s life and took them back to the dark ages. It even isolated Deir Ezzor from the rest of the world by producing a law to punish those who watch television, or communicate with people out side the areas of its control.
It also imposed the so-called (religious dress), and destroyed the relations among the members of family, where children who joined the organization don’t have to obey their parents as long as they obey the orders of the organization, so the elements of Daesh became like the elements of air force intelligence or military security of Assad regime.
Daesh rule over Deir Ezzor lasted from 2014 to late 2017, and was defeated after two campaigns were launched against it, one of them in the eastern Euphrates by the international coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), while the other one was carried out in the western Euphrates by Assad’s forces and the Russian and Iranian militias, that are no less horrible than the terrorism of Daesh, but in a different way.
After the clouds of extremism parted, the people of Deir Ezzor rushed to repair the cracks left by the terrorist organizations in the walls of the pure society of Deir Ezzor, so education was at the top of the list of community rehabilitation, as the children of Deir Ezzor were prevented from attending school for many years, and because people are aware that ignorance is a fertile environment for terrorism to grow in and expand. Now, the buds of life are blossoming little by little in all areas of life with hope that the remnants of the terrorist organizations’ dark thought will be eliminated from Deir Ezzor community.
